SHARE

Ex-agent’s book covers death of JFK

GJ retiree was on president's security detail

Gerald Blaine of Grand Junction was a Secret Service agent who was assigned to project President John F. Kennedy. Blaine’s book, which includes input from nearly every agent on the Kennedy Detail, will be released Tuesday.

The conspiracies and misinformation tied to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination became so crazy for Gerald Blaine to read or hear that he finally decided to do something about it.

On Tuesday, Blaine’s book, “The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence” will be released by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. The book is the first time that nearly every Secret Service agent assigned to protect Kennedy has spoken about the events before, during and after Nov. 22, 1963.

Blaine, now 78, was one of those Secret Service agents.

Blaine, who lived in the Grand Valley as a child, retired to the area in 2003. Not long after he settled into a retired life of family, fishing and golf, he read accounts of the day, including a theory that an agent of The Kennedy Detail, the men assigned to protect Kennedy, was the lone gunman.

That was the final straw for Blaine.

The combination of conspiracy theories, misinformation in movies or TV, and other twisted myths on the Internet that have materialized during the past 46 years prompted Blaine to speak with more than 60 Secret Service agents and/or their families for his book, including men who were in Texas the day Kennedy was assassinated.

Nearly everyone agreed to talk because, like Blaine, they were concerned that the history of Kennedy’s assassination was going to be rewritten by bloggers and conspiracy theorists.

Blaine spent six years interviewing former colleagues about the assassination, the events before the shooting and how each agent coped with the fallout. The men didn’t talk until recently because there is an expected code of silence, Blaine said.

Even now, Blaine admitted, the men of The Kennedy Detail will never divulge certain information about Kennedy. But they did talk about his assassination. Several living members of The Kennedy Detail met up in Dallas to shoot a Discovery Channel special that will air Nov. 22.

“It took a load off,” Blaine said. “We hope to help the nation.”

Blaine has fielded interview requests from as far away as South America regarding the release of “The Kennedy Detail.”

Next week, he begins a cross-country tour to promote the book, which Blaine insists was read and signed off on by Kennedy’s family.